Not mine but I really like this:
Tattoos hurt. Or so I understand.
It has taken me a long time to agree to this, because I can't warm to the image of that needle puncturing three layers of my skin and leaving behind an indelible blotch of coloured ink that I'll wear for the rest of my life. I have never thought of myself as the tattoo type. But Leo, my love, has convinced me how romantic a notion it is, something that will forever remind us of each other, and of this perfect, tranquil day.
So as we stroll along a grimy, trendy side street towards a shop he knows of called Tattoo You, he explains what we're about to do.
“It’s called kanji.” he says, speaking with a trace of the accent he brought with him from England, decades ago. He is bright and contented today, looks younger than his thirty-three years. “You know those symbols the Japanese use in their writing? Those squiggly little blocks that look like pagodas and tic tac toe boards and such?”
I smile at his simplistic description of such a complicated language. “Yes, I’ve seen the tic tac toe boards.”
“Well each one of those little symbols translates into a word, like “courage” or “brother” or “handsome”, things like that. You just choose a word that means something to you. It’s very popular.”
“I see.” The wind plays with my skirt and to preserve my modesty I have to hold it down with both hands. “And exactly which words are we going to etch into our flesh? Pain? Infection?”
“No-”
“-Unsightly Scar?”
He laughs. “Celeste... we’re just going to get each other’s names.”
“Our names? I thought you said these symbols referred to words.”
“My name is a word. Or rather, an astrological sign. They have symbols for that too.” He contorts his face into what he believes to be a menacing growl, which makes him look more like Bert Lahr in the Wizard of Oz than any beast of the veldt. “Leo, king of the jungle, most arrogant and ostentatious sign of the zodiac.”
He makes me laugh, unselfconsciously, like no one ever has. He knows he is neither arrogant nor ostentatious, that his mother couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate name for her gentle little boy. But I love the way he advances along the street beside me, mimicking a leonine stride, unaware of or unconcerned about the puzzled faces that pass us, pretending, for a moment, that he is brash and cocksure. He is a terrible actor, and an even worse liar, flushing deep red at the merest hint of dishonesty. My mother and grandmother, smitten with him like schoolgirls, remind me daily how lucky I am to have found such a man.
“You’d be surprised how many people I know have names like that. ” he says after a moment, falling back in step with me. “Names that are also words, I mean. It’s strange, really. My parents, as you know, are Garnet and Rose, my sister is Dawn…my best friend Bill, his wife Holly… I don’t know how many Marks and Cliffs and Robins I’ve run into over the years…and then of course there’s Violet. She’s the one that pointed this out to me in the first place.”
Violet. Violet Hanessian. I feel a cloud forming, a familiar sensation of dread that comes over me whenever I hear her name. I look over at him, but if he’s aware of bringing his ex-wife into yet another conversation of ours, he doesn’t show it. I promised myself I wouldn’t react this time. It’s only a casual remark, he only mentioned her in the way he would mention an old friend or co-worker or anyone else who had touched his life in some way. Perhaps he’ll move on, I think to myself, saying nothing so as not to invite further mention of her. Perhaps he isn’t even conscious of having introduced her into our discussion.
He is quiet for a moment, looks idly into store windows as we pass, and I assume that his mind has wandered on. Then, with admiration: “She was so perceptive, was Violet. I would never have noticed something like that.”
The cloud darkens. I wish I could think of some other subject to steer him towards without appearing too obvious. He’s only reminiscing, I assure myself; it’s harmless and healthy, even, to revisit pleasant times in one’s life. I’m about to comment on the refreshing coolness of this June day when he turns to me and smiles sheepishly.
“Sorry. I keep forgetting.”
I link my arm through his and kiss his neck just beneath his ear. He pulls away, as he always does, with a bashful laugh at how ticklish he is. It’s just the two of us again; we are back here, in the present, strolling pleasantly on a calm summer day. But Violet has seeped into my mind and into the companionable silence that settles over her ex-husband and me. I can’t help but think about her. She isn’t welcome in my thoughts, but she lives there all the same.
I met Leo a year ago, fourteen months after Violet had left him for a teaching job in Japan. That’s how he puts it, anyway, referring to the nation, and the employment that drew her there, as though it were a bandit lover that had lured her away from him with trinkets and glittering jewels. I met him when a band of untanned skin still circled the third finger of his left hand, when the insult was still fresh, when the certainty that his life would have to continue without her was just starting to sink in. He had only just taken his wedding ring off, he said, a week before we met. He still can’t part with it.
He would have gone with her, that was the most difficult part to accept. He would have quit his job and gone with her, if living in Japan meant that much to her. He’d become an English teacher too, he’d said. They could go as a couple, experience the Orient and its culture together. He had said everything he thought she wanted to hear. She had said no, and then said perhaps the worst thing a departing wife can say to a husband still happily in love: but I’ll always love you as a friend. He didn’t know what an empty promise it was, that it should have dampened his hope instead of fueling it. Because of that harmless little lie, it took him fourteen months to realize she was gone.
When I met him their divorce had just been granted and he had moved from the attic flat they’d shared to the smaller, less expensive apartment he lives in now. We spent countless evenings there, over homemade pizza and wine, talking candidly about the bewildering shock that had ended his marriage. She just left, he said. They were perfectly in love and she just left, with no other explanation than that she had always wanted to live in Japan. He paid for the plane ticket, told her he’d always love her, waited for her to come to her senses and return.
Perhaps most women would have left him then, too threatened or irritated by the level of emotion he was willing to display for another woman. It didn’t bother me at the time. I thought it touching, how little animosity he felt towards the woman who had broken his heart. I thought it meant he had gotten over her, and could afford to be charitable.
I have never suggested he move into my apartment, or that we rent another one together, even though sometimes when we part on Monday mornings I find myself wishing that I could look forward to coming home to him, to our home, each night. I kiss him goodbye at the doorway, promise to see him in a few days, and resist the urge to propose marriage. He looks so adorably disheveled standing there in the track pants he wears to bed, with his hair sticking up in all directions and drowsiness weighing down his eyes. He looks at me with such uncertainty, as though he expects me to vanish one day too. I could spend my life convincing him that I don’t let go that easily. But he also looks at me as though he’s betraying Violet somehow, as though he owes her constancy and adoration even now when it’s no longer wanted. I know it is too soon for him to think about marriage. And in many ways it is too soon for me, too.
Every so often I’ll run across little fragments of his former life with her; bootleg Neil Young tapes labeled in her hand, an eyelash curler, Mardi Gras beads from their honeymoon. Things she left behind, things that, for whatever reason, he took the trouble of transporting from the old apartment to the new and likely won’t ever throw out. Meaningless little trifles, really, no different than the stringless guitar I’ve had since college or the Field of Dreams video I borrowed from an old sweetheart but somehow never returned. Yet when I encounter these remnants of their past I still feel uneasy, like I’ve stumbled into someone’s else’s ongoing relationship by accident and should leave before I violate their privacy further.
Except I can’t bring myself to leave. Not over a ghost. I ignore the old phone bills I find sometimes, when he asks me to help him sort out his finances, and never comment on the statements from thirteen months ago that show his repeated calls to Kyoto, then Osaka, then Nagasaki, then nothing, when she stopped telling him where she was headed next. He has no way to contact her now; at least his pride has stopped allowing him to try.
He keeps a picture in his living room, though, a glossy 8x10 photo of he and Violet flanking Mick Jagger backstage at some concert. Their faces are shiny and wide-eyed with the euphoria of brushing so close to greatness. Jagger appears unmoved by the experience. Leo assures me the picture is there because of the evidence it provides for those friends who don’t believe he ever met a Rolling Stone. The fact that Violet is in the picture too, he says, is merely coincidental.
But it does allow me to put a face to the name, and realize that in every conceivable way she and I are opposite. She is tiny and dark, with short-cropped black hair, small dark eyes, an impish smile that reminds of me of a children’s television host. She is young to have such a name as Violet. Perhaps in that regard we are similar; I am young to be called Celeste. But otherwise Violet and I have nothing in common save an interest, mine ongoing and hers long dead, in Leo Cobb.
Everything about me is pale; hair the colour of straw, eyes like robin’s eggs, skin that never tans, only burns lobster red and reverts to ghostly white. And I am tall for a woman, a real liability when it comes to romance. No man, no conqueror, wants his prize to tower above him. I stand eye to eye with Leo and never wear heels out of deference to his masculinity. The Mighty Oake, the kids in school used to tease me, making me curse my ancestors for naming their tribe after a tree. Even then, at twelve, I was six inches taller than every boy in the class.
How I envy Violet her diminutive frame. I imagine she can shop in the junior miss section, and can find a pair of jeans that actually reach her ankles. She has the cute perkiness of a little American gymnast, her looks imply the kind of coquettish spirit that doesn’t know there’s any other way for a woman to be. She evidently convinced Leo that there was no other way for a woman to be; he won’t admit in the presence of his willowy new girlfriend but I know that when he thinks of his ideal woman, her elfin little body comes to mind.
I am thinking of Violet again. I promised myself I wouldn’t fixate, that I would let one day go by without mentally conjuring up an image of her, or worse, of Leo and her together. I squeeze Leo’s hand as we approach the large neon entrance of the tattoo parlor, and turn my mind to our purpose.
“Wait a minute,” I say, remembering the thread of the conversation he started before Violet’s name was woven into it. “My name isn’t a noun. Or a verb.”
He smiles. “I’ve already thought of that.”
“Oh?” I wonder what he has in mind. “Don’t tell me you’re going to spell out my name instead, like those old sailors used to do... Celeste is seven letters long. You’ll bleed to death.”
“Bleed to death.” he repeats, laughing. “Well, someone’s afraid of the tattoo gun, isn’t she?
“Not at all.” I’m lying and he knows it. “Just idly curious about what you’re planning to do.”
“Celeste means ‘heavenly’, in case you didn’t know.” He brings my hand up to his mouth and kisses it gently, his eyes laughing at me all the while. He climbs the steps of the tattoo shop and pushes open the door. “So I’m getting the symbol for heaven. It’s only one little symbol. And I’ve known Gibb for years, he’s every bit the professional.” He leans down and rests his forehead gently against mine for a moment. “There won’t be any bleeding to death.”
The temperature drops at least ten degrees as the door closes with a jingle behind us. I have never been in such a place as this, and I feel vaguely as though I’ve stepped into a foreign country without so much as a guidebook. It is bright, at least, simple and clean. The floor is a cheerful mosaic of old record album covers that have been varnished onto the linoleum, and the walls are adorned with every type of artwork imaginable, everything from dragons to fairies to Celtic knots. There are chairs against the windows, beside tables with magazines strewn across them. A sign near the door outlines prices, admonishes drunks and minors, promises that tattooing offers what every woman wants: a lifetime commitment.
The fact that there are no customers in this shop alarms me momentarily, until I remember that it is Tuesday, and two-thirty, and pleasant out. Leo and I linger in front of the paper art on the walls; he points out graphic images of women entwined with snakes and skulls with roses tumbling from the eye sockets. I can’t imagine wanting to commit such a sight to one’s body for life. But before I can express my hesitation to commit anything to my body for life, the volume of an unseen radio suddenly decreases and a voice calls out from the back of the shop. We both turn and a short, red haired man in a Calgary Flames jersey steps out from behind the counter to greet us.
“Leo, my man.” the fellow says, and comes forward to clasp Leo’s hand. “How you doing, buddy?”
This man looks young from a distance, but up close I can see that he’s nearer to forty than we are. Freckles cover the bridge of his nose, and a single silver ring loops through one of his nostrils. Another loop punctuates the end of one eyebrow, and connects to one of his ear studs by a thin linked chain. He is solid and muscular, and it only occurs to me now that he will be the one wielding the gun.
“Ernest Gibb himself.” Leo shakes hands heartily, and laughs as the man scowls at the use of his given name. “You haven’t changed a bit. What’s it been – a year?”
“God, more like two.”
“No, not two.”
“Yeah, man, not since what’s-his-name was here, that kid from Gravenhurst or wherever the hell.” Gibb laughs, and glances at me. I look away. “Man, was I surprised to see you walk in here, it’s such a small goddamn world-”
“Oh, sorry, honey… this is Gibb, an old friend of mine.” Leo breaks in suddenly with the comfortable rudeness that exists only between good friends. Gibb doesn’t seem to mind. “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Gibb, this is my girlfriend Celeste.”
Gibb nods at me, looks hesitant, but says. “Good to meet you, Celeste.”
“And you.” I reply warmly. I want to say something folksy and charming like “Leo has told me so much about you” or some such icebreaker, except it isn’t true. I had never even heard him mention Gibb until today. So I opt for something safer. “Leo tells me you’re the man to see when it comes to tattoos.”
Gibb’s eyebrow, and the jewelry embedded in it, shoots up. “You’re here for a tattoo?” He looks at Leo as if this couldn’t possibly be true. “Serious?”
“Yeah, we’re taking the plunge.” Leo says. “Celeste is a bit nervous so I promised her you’d be gentle.”
“Oh, hey, absolutely.” he promises me. “It’s not nearly as bad as you think. Do you have a design in mind or do want to look at some flash?”
I turn to Leo. “What did you call it, love? Kanji?”
“Kanji.” Gibb nods. “Nice place to start.” He sends Leo a smile that hints at a private joke. “Come on back and I’ll get you set up.”
Leo takes my hand and we follow Gibb’s casual swagger towards the back. The simplicity of the front of the shop gradually gives way to complication; a worn black dentist’s chair sits in front of a long steel counter cluttered with bottles of ink and rolls of paper towels and piles of old magazines. The pictures on the walls back here are of heavily tattooed individuals, or of people tattooed and pierced in places one should hesitate to have publicly displayed. Almost every spare bit of counter is taken up with radios and razors and boxes of sky-blue plastic gloves. A cluster of new needles, still sealed within their thin green sleeves, sit primly alongside the electric tattoo gun and menace me with their cool sterility.
Gibb straddles a small wheeled stool and glides over to a tilted drawing board beside the dentist’s chair. Leo sits down comfortably and motions for me to sit down on the folding chair by the counter’s edge. He promised me he’d go first, and, guiltily, I’m happy to let him.
“So you want to show me which ones you want?” Gibb pulls a thick black binder from a shelf above his drawing board and holds it out towards Leo. “Kanji’s in the back.”
“We don’t need to look, we know what we want.” Leo takes the binder from him casually. “ Heaven and Leo, if you can manage it.”
“Heaven and Leo, huh?” Gibb muses. “How did I know?”
“I’m a romantic, I admit it.” Leo offers, and smiles at me. “Can’t help myself.”
Gibb takes a sheet of blue paper from the same shelf and chooses a black pencil from among several slanting out of an old glass jar. His chin is down but he seems to be smiling, laughing almost. He looks up at me, and nods at the binder.
“You might want to take a look at the book.” He says. “In case you change your mind about having this guy’s name on you for life.”
“Shut it, Gibb.” Leo laughs, falling into a British expression as he always does when he’s uncomfortable. But he does hand me the book. “She’s already nervous enough.”
Gibb rises and moves around behind him, reaching across the sink for one of the cordless razors that sits along the back of the counter. “Hey, she seems like a nice person.” He winks at me. “Just thought she ought to be warned.”
“After the great press I gave her about you? I’m crushed, Gibb.”
“Hey, man, I’m just telling it like it is.”
I’m about to ask why Gibb has brought out the razor when he hasn’t even asked where Leo wants the tattoo. I expect some joke about the simian condition of Leo’s shoulders but instead Gibb tilts Leo’s head and lifts a section of hair from behind his right ear.
“So you want this one in the same place as the other one?”
I sit forward. Leo shakes Gibb’s hand off him and laughs nervously. He smoothes down his hair and glances at me, quickly, with a sheepish look.
I return his look with a frown. “You already have a tattoo?”
He starts to reply but says nothing, so I stand up and move closer to him. “Can I see?”
He seems about to protest, but doesn’t stop me when I gently tilt his head and lift back the hair by his ear. There, etched into the skin just above the top of his ear, a small, faded symbol like a pagoda or a tic tac toe board. A collection of horizontal lines tipped at each end with a small dot of ink, meaningless to me, but obviously put there with care.
I have seen his body, when moonlight from the window by his bed illuminates the length of him, or during August afternoons by the pool, or when he steps out of his clothes at the end of the day and comes to me, unashamed. I have even felt something close to ownership at the sight of him, the comfortable feeling that this body has become as familiar to me as my own. But I have never seen this.
I wonder now why I never saw it before. There must have been times, lying idly beside him in the early morning, lazily stroking his hair while he slept, when he could have turned his head only slightly and revealed this little patch of ink. Sitting beside him in the car I could have glanced a certain way and noticed something funny behind his ear. But I only imagine these things now that I know it’s there.
Leo gives me a plaintive look. “Are you mad at me, sweetie?”
“I’m just surprised you didn’t tell me you had one.” I say brightly. “All this time you never mentioned it.”
“I forget I have it most of the time.” He answers. “I got it years ago.”
“Does it mean something?”
I catch a look in his eye, a flicker of something, but he smiles. “Yeah, but you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“No I won’t.” I say, inexplicably relieved. “I promise.”
“No, really Celeste, not now.” He softens his words, shifts his glance almost imperceptibly towards Gibb. “Please.”
So I turn and survey the rows of ink, which look like the plastic squeeze bottles of mustard and ketchup that clutter hot dog stands. A glass case on the wall houses shelves full of small metal loops- likely the former home of the one in Gibb’s eyebrow - and several other metal shapes that I assume are designed to be driven into various parts of the body. I’m relieved that Leo didn’t suggest piercing something as a tribute to our love, although tattooing ourselves doesn’t seem much better. What pains some people will take to avoid wearing a simple gold band.
“So you still teaching?” Gibb asks conversationally. He has moved back to his drawing table, and sits sketching out a design on a sheet of blue paper. He holds the black pencil like a true artist, a casual, comfortable grip that almost allows the pencil to float between his fingers. “Or did the kids finally get to you?”
“No, I’m still in the fray. But I did change schools.” Leo replies. “Smaller one, this time, less attitude. Fewer snot-nosed parents. ”
Gibb nods in a way that defies interpretation. “You still over on Delisle?”
“No, the rent was a bit much. I found a great place near the school, half the price…”
I’m always surprised at how much two men can sound like the women gossips they deride, discussing the comings and goings of their domestic struggle like housewives sharing coffee by the clothesline. Their conversation shows no sign of strain, and perhaps that’s where it differs from that of women; if a friend of mine had just embarrassed me like that our words would have been tinged with hurt feelings for hours. They carry on as if nothing had happened.
I flip through the plastic sheets of photographs, and peer at the images of freshly tattooed calves, forearms and belly buttons. At the back of the book are more images like the ones I saw on the wall on the way in, more unicorns and hearts and tribal designs. Leo’s laughter blends with Gibb’s as they talk about people I’ve never met, and so I tune out the meaning of their words and listen instead to the sound of happiness in Leo’s voice.
Near the back of the book are pages of neat black kanji symbols, rows of them crowded together with translations typed beneath them. They’re beautiful, really, so intricate and simple at the same time. I’ve seen such ideograms on the sides of buildings around town but I never considered them as anything more than a language I couldn’t read. When I look at them this closely they look little works of art, tiny depictions of some concept important enough to be expressed with precision and grace. Even questionable words, like “stupid”, “unfaithful”, “drunk”, words that I couldn’t imagine anyone scratching into their skin, are far prettier than their meanings should allow.
The symbol for heaven appears on the first page. It’s simple, sweeping, like a human figure or an Inuit inukshuk, and I feel oddly proud that my name can be rendered in such a pleasing way. Some of the other symbols are too boxy and too densely detailed to be really pretty, but mine could be a hieroglyph, or a rune, and seeing it makes me realize that every language on earth has a name for heaven.
He will wear this for me, I think. A wedding ring could be taken off, or lost or no longer needed. This way we’ll wear a part of each other forever.
My eyes casually scan the pages, and stop. A familiar image, a collection of horizontal lines tipped at each end with a small drop of ink; I look at the definition and feel the breath rush into my lungs.
Leo looks over, startled. “What is it?” Gibb looks up from his stencil.
“I just…” my voice falters and I clear my throat. “I just noticed this symbol here, the one you’ve got behind your ear.”
“Celeste…”
“It’s one of the flowers. It says here it means ‘violet’.”
Leo sighs.
It’s only another tiny shock, like the thousands of other stings I haven’t quite steeled myself against, like when I wore his dinner jacket home one chill evening and found his wedding ring in the pocket, or when I borrowed a book of his for a train ride and had their marriage certificate flutter to my feet. Violet Jaroslava Hanessian and Leo Martin Cobb, February 24, 1992, City Hall, the clumsily typed details still burned into my memory. I realized then that he was the more sentimental of the two, holding onto something I would have expected her to want to keep. And I realized, with some surprise, that divorcing her had been an act of love, like letting a trapped bird go and admiring the beauty of its flight.
The worst part of it, like always, like now, is that I didn’t search these relics out, they weren’t the just reward of a snooping girlfriend. Each time I was unprepared, innocent of any crime, stumbling stupidly into something that would upset me for days but which I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about.
Everyone has a past, my mother told me. There’s no sin in that. But he wears his past on his skin, just behind the top of his ear where his hair hides most of it from view, and from now on, I will always, always, know it is there.
“Look, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it.” Leo reaches forward and clasps my hands. “I just knew it would upset you. It was so long ago; it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It was a stupid, rash thing we did.”
“You both got one?” My mouth is so dry I can barely talk. I should have guessed as much. I should have suspected all of it the minute I saw the tattoo. “Each other’s names?”
“I’ve told you she was really into tattoos, haven’t I? We used to come down here every three months or so to get her another one. This thing here was her idea, after I asked her to marry me the first time and she said no. I thought doing it might make her change her mind, and eventually she did. She was a little difficult, you know, I always had to placate her moods.”
As he speaks, a boyish little smile tugs at his mouth, a smile he tries hard to contain but one that always surfaces whenever he has occasion to talk about Violet. It hardly matters what he has to say about her, he always remembers it with a smile. He could tell me she set fire to him once and that smile would be still appear, as if she were a roguish little devil whose disdain for him made her all the more dear to his heart.
I can’t look at Leo anymore. I’m afraid that I’m going to start crying. Instead I see Gibb’s face, and my embarrassment blooms into humiliation. This is the kind of conversation people have in private, beneath bedcovers or on secluded park benches, alone.
Leo frowns, then squeezes my hand. “Look, honey, Violet is not a threat to you. I haven’t seen or heard from her in over a year, you know that. She lives in Japan, for God’s sake.”
He has used this reasoning on me before. He doesn’t understand what little comfort I take in the knowledge that they are divorced only because she no longer wants him. I shouldn’t be concerned, it seems, with whether or not he still wants her. She lives far away; that alone, that mere question of geography, is supposed to be enough to douse my jealousy and convince me that his love for her died somewhere in the mid Pacific, and that he is as happy to forget her as she is forgetting him.
“You know you have nothing to worry about.” he says. “I’ll probably never see her again.”
“Actually, man, you’re going to find this hard to believe.” Gibb’s voice breaks in, flat and annoying. “Vi’s back in town, for a couple of weeks I think. She stopped in the other day, took me out for a beer. I have her number if you want to catch up with her.”
And so there it is.
I have always dreaded this moment, and now that it’s here it feels exactly as I’ve always imagined it would. Dull and heavy, a stone lodged in my lungs that threatens to weigh me down until I can’t breathe.
I knew it would come, this day, I knew the flimsy barrier of Japan couldn’t protect me from the inevitable for long. I was foolish to think I’d get away that easily, with only whispered memories and taunting images and the pale comfort that she was too far away to be real.
I can see the next week’s course events as clearly as if I were watching a movie. I even know how it will end. And as much as I want to hate Gibb, as much as I know that from now on when I think of how I lost Leo I will forever trace it back to that Calgary Flames jersey and a man too old to have jewelry in his nose, I know that I owe him something too, if only the quiet acknowledgement that his warning has been well understood.
Leo says nothing for a minute, just blinks at Gibb as though he’s trying to figure out an undecipherable accent. Then he sits back, appears disinterested. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t believe it when you came in here. Small goddamn world. You oughta give her a call and we can get together again, you know, shoot the shit again, before she goes back.”
Gibb is like everyone else I’ve ever met, completely comfortable speaking candidly about a friend’s ex lover in front of his new one, as if we all belong to a little club for serial monogamists who speak casually of our predecessors with disinterest and aplomb. He seems to have forgotten I am in the room. At the very least, it seems my position as Leo’s current love is unimportant, as though I am simply one of many he’ll have in his life, all of whom he’ll bring before Gibb to get tattooed.
“Did she ask about me?” Leo asks, admirably veiling hope behind mild curiosity.
“No, but you know Vi, man. Out of sight out of mind. I bet she wouldn’t mind hearing from you, though.”
“Well, I don’t think I need to talk to her.” Leo says casually, looking at me with a question on his face. He tries to appear nonchalant. “There’s not much to say at this point.”
“So you don’t want her number?” Gibb asks. The surprises him more than the fact that we are here for tattoos.
“No.” Leo shrugs. “Not particularly.”
I know that he will call in here again tomorrow, hands in pockets, pretending he was just passing by, and will say, offhandedly, that he might as well get her number while he’s here, just to call and wish her well, just to be polite. I know he will tell himself that five years of marriage warrants a phone call, at least. I know that his slide will begin there, and that he’ll be lost before he even picks up the phone.
I should tell him this. I shouldn’t sit here, silent, smiling weakly at every earnest lie he tells himself, and me. I should let him face what everyone, including me, including Gibb, seems to have known for some time.
“You should take it, Leo.” I say, with more calmness than I feel. “You know you will at some point. You ought to get it now.”
“Celeste, I don’t need to talk to her.” But he looks shaken, unsettled. “Especially if it will upset you. He pauses to let the words sink in. “What I had with her is over.”
“It isn’t. It never will be.”
“Celeste…”
“You wear her on your skin, Leo, adding my name to the other side won’t change that. Maybe someday it will shock another woman who doesn’t understand why you carry around old lovers for life.”
Leo looks worried. There is a glimmer of understanding in his eyes, and I could almost swear he knows, at this moment, everything I’ve known for a year. There is guilt there, and helplessness, which I want more than anything to soothe away. I know too well what it’s like to love intensely and have it only halfway returned.
“I’ll get it removed.” he whispers. “Straight away, I promise.”
I sigh. “No, love. It’s the only real thing she left behind. I don’t think you could live without it.”
“I don’t care about it, really. I’m more concerned with you.”
“I know. But I’m fine.”
Leo glances over at Gibb. “Listen, Gibb, we’re going to have to come back another time. I think we ought to-”
“No, it’s alright.” I stand up and gently tug Leo to his feet. He lets me move him out of the way and stands, bewildered, as I take his place in the chair. “I want to get it done.”
Gibb rolls his stool over uncertainly. “You can think about it some more if you like, it’s no problem.”
I shake my head. “I know what I want.”
“Celeste.” Leo protests. “Honey…”
I tilt my head slightly towards Gibb and pull back my hair. “Right here.” I say, tapping the patch of skin just above my ear. “Just like his.”
Gibb’s face expresses the equivalent of a shrug. But his eyes say something else to me, a communication I don’t return. “Okay, if you’re sure.” he says finally. “It’ll hurt more there, just so you know.”
“I know.”
He glides back to his table and prepares a new sheet of paper. “The good news is that the symbol for Leo isn’t complicated. It won’t take long.”
“No, not Leo.” I say. “The other one.”
He frowns. “What other one?”
“Heaven.”
Tattoo
Moderators: deer of the dawn, Furls Fire
I really enjoy the story each time I read it. I'm pleased someone else also likes it though.-
iQuestor
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 2520
- Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 12:20 am
- Location: South of Disorder
this is a really well written story. I enjoyed it very much.
Becoming Elijah has been released from Calderwood Books!
Korik's Fate
It cannot now be set aside, nor passed on...
Korik's Fate
It cannot now be set aside, nor passed on...
